Article excerpt

As the exact details of their rescue were still emerging, 11
foreign tourists and eight Egyptians walked free Monday afternoon
following a 10-day hostage drama that took them from remotest Egypt,
into Sudan, and possibly to Libya.

While the kidnappers' identities have yet to be released, at
least six of them appear to have been killed in a raid that possibly
involved Egyptian, Sudanese, and European forces. All of the
abductees appeared to be in good health.

The rescue ends an ordeal that highlights new risks for adventure
tourists in the western Egyptian desert due to the instability in
neighboring Chad and Sudan.

"There does not seem to be a lot of information on organized
crime in the region, although it is on the rise," says Abdul Moneim
al-Said, head of the Egyptian al-Ahram Centre for Political and
Strategic Studies.

He says that the area is ripe for such kinds of crimes, given the
ongoing conflicts, like the one in Darfur.

"It is a brand of violence that is similar to the on-going piracy
in the horn of Africa and the Red Sea, and the increasing human
trafficking. The desert in this area is wide. It's a wasteland that
is convenient for such groups to organize themselves and the current
failing states feed into those kinds of crimes," he says.

"This is the first time something like this has happened in the
western desert in the past 25 years," says Hani Zaki, director of
safari trips at EMCO Travel, one of the largest travel agencies in
Egypt. "I do not take it as an indication of the desert not being
safe. All trips organized here have security coverage represented in
communication devices and security guides, and we usually use the
Bedouin local communities for additional security."

Official sources so far have not given many specifics on the
nature of the operation, but have acknowledged the use of force.

The Italian foreign minister, Franco Frattini, told La Stampa
newspaper that "there was no planned raid." But rather, he said, an
unspecified "meeting at a checkpoint" where gunshots erupted,
presumably accidentally.

Egypt's foreign minister, Ahmad Maher, confirmed that the
kidnapped group was released through an operation and that half of
the kidnappers were killed in a mission that took place before dawn
on Monday. …